


this is a gift (it comes with a price)

by distracted_dragon



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dealing With Trauma, F/M, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Modern Girl in Thedas, Self Care, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, appalling misrepresentations of engineering, brittle character, engineering as written by a physicist, i'm not kidding they don't even meet until 20k words in, sort of an au but not really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 19:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16024742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distracted_dragon/pseuds/distracted_dragon
Summary: Wren Myers wakes up on the side of a road leading into Redcliffe with no memory of how she arrived there. With no initial resources or allies, Wren must juggle learning to survive in a strange world while desperately trying to blend in. As the Inquisition creeps steadily closer, she finds it more challenging to stay hidden than she originally thought.





	this is a gift (it comes with a price)

**Author's Note:**

> This work will deal with: alienation, imposter syndrome, greater good versus personal wishes, sacrifice, the morality of interference, fate and free will.
> 
> And, of course, mage rights.
> 
> \---
> 
> Since Wren doesn't initially know any Common, her comprehension of anything other than simple words will be fairly bad. She'll make lots of grammatical errors when speaking in Common, which are intentional on my part (except for when there are genuine typos, haha). Her Common will improve with time!

Awareness comes to Wren in random bits and pieces, much like ikea furniture. There’s something soft wrapped around her shoulders. She groans and rolls over, expecting to find a pillow but instead discovering a patch of dirt. That isn’t supposed to be there, she’s pretty sure. Wren may be a sleepy bitch, but she isn’t usually desperate enough to fall asleep on the ground.

She opens her eyes. Sparse trees partially hide the sky, which is a lovely shade of blue. The occasional bush or tree dots the side of a pillar-lined dirt road. The air here is thicker than it should be and it clings to her skin, but she can’t quite pin down why. Her mind is hazy as if she’s slept for too long or stumbled out of a car after an eight-hour drive. Wren glances down and finds herself wrapped in her favorite blanket-- it’s blue and fluffy and currently dotted with leaves and specks of dirt. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but, she notes, no shoes. If this is a dream, then she could have at least dreamed herself some goddamn shoes. Wren glares down at her socked feet and desperately wishes for shoes, but alas, nothing happens.

“Well, fuck,” she says to the sky.

Rather rudely, the sky does not reply. However, her words stir a flurry of movement from the road as a figure dashes out of Wren’s field of vision.

“What the-- hey! You! Why are you running?” she sits up, but the motion sends everything spinning like a cheap amusement park ride. After her vision settles, the person is long gone. Wren draws her knees up to her chest and examines her surroundings again. Beyond the trees, she catches glimpses of a lake and of some rather impressive cliffs with gushing waterfalls. If she’s dreaming, then at least it’s a beautiful dream. Still, she has no clue where the fuck she is.

Wren checks her pockets, only to find a whole lotta nothing, plus some pocket lint. So she has no phone, which means no GPS, and she’s in the middle of… somewhere. Great. She sets about the laborious process of standing up, which induces another bout of dizziness. After Wren’s feet are more or less firmly planted, she lets herself think. Or tries to, anyway, but her mind still feels slow and clumsy. 

She’s oddly lightheaded and drowsy in a way that makes her question when she last ate and if she took her meds. Wren doesn’t feel particularly hyperactive, but then again, she is fairly tired. Brow furrowing, she tries to recall when she last took her ADHD medication but the memory feels like it’s just out of reach. Her worry, too, slips through her drowsy fingers. Okay, then. Wren decides to move on to the next most pressing question, which is the matter of her being completely and utterly lost. 

Kindergarteners are taught that when they’re lost, they should stay in the same place until someone comes looking for them. However, kindergarten doesn’t tell you what to do when you’re stranded on the side of a road with no shoes. Wren may be pursuing a PhD in mechanical engineering, but never let it be said that she has even an ounce of common sense. Mind still adrift in a sea of drowsiness, Wren chooses a direction and begins plodding along the road.

It’s too cold to be running around with only a blanket for warmth. The cold of the ground permeates her socks and her feet _hurt_ from the cold and the rocks in the road, but Wren keeps going. This is a strange dream, she thinks, but walking along the road gives her a journey and if there’s a journey, then there must be a destination. And if there’s a destination, then there’s something waiting there for her. Probably.

Wren walks until her feet hurt, and then she walks some more. The fog in her head doesn’t lift but that probably makes things better instead of worse. If she was fully processing everything going on, she would be panicking right now. Instead, she’s wondering if she can take a nap under one of the statues holding a torch. Silver linings are a wonderful thing.

She doesn’t know how long she walks before stumbling across a person. It could be a few minutes or it could be an hour. The person wears awfully strange clothes, an old-looking tunic and breeches and an odd little cap on his head. There’s a sword belted at his waist, but it’s most likely fake. Maybe he’s a cosplayer? But honestly, Wren has more important things to worry about than why a random man next to the side of the road has a sword of dubious authenticity. Wren ambles right over to him and smiles politely. 

“Hi,” she says, “I’m lost.”

The man gives her a strange look and asks her a question in a language that Wren can’t quite place.

“Sorry, what was that?”

He says something again and Wren tilts her head. Exasperated, the man turns and calls something over his shoulder. A moment later, a woman clothed in white and red walks over and smiles gently at both of them. It bears more than a passing resemblance to a Chantry outfit from Dragon Age, but hey, Wren has had far stranger dreams than this one.

They start exchanging a flurry of words as Wren wraps her blanket more tightly around her shoulders and wonders what this dream is about, exactly. Normally her dreams have some sort of purpose to them, or even just an interesting place or some fascinating information. This dream, though is odd. Her body feels too heavy and clunky. She has the faint impression that she should be doing something, but she has no clue what to do.

Wren contemplates this as she watches the flames merrily dance atop a nearby pillar. The Chantry sister says something else but then Wren’s dizzy, and the sky is spread out before her like a tapestry, and she’s falling, and--

\---

She passes out.

\---

When Wren comes to, she’s curled up atop a thin mattress on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed. Many other sets of bunk beds line the room, but Wren’s is the only one with a tray of food and a pitcher next to it. Her head feels far clearer even as her stomach rumbles angrily. She sits up, kicking off her blanket, and considers the tray of food. It’s only a bowl of some murky broth and bread, but Wren is hungry enough that she’s beyond the point of caring. If she can stomach lunches from the cafeteria of her public high school, then she can tolerate this.

Her stomach tells her that it’s been some time since she last ate, and so she’s glad for the relatively bland food. She inhales it like a vacuum cleaner, careful to keep crumbs from landing on her bed. After her plate is empty, Wren pours herself a glass of water and sips at it as she contemplates her surroundings.

The room is lit with several torches mounted on the stone walls and the frames of the bunk beds are wooden. Everything is made from basic materials, with no plastics or synthetics in sight. Even if her mind was foggy when she first woke up on the side of that dirt road, she remembers how both the people she saw wore outfits that were distinctly not “modern”. The woman wore what looked like robes of a Chantry sister and, well. Wren doesn’t really know what to think besides _wow, that lady sure looked like a Chantry sister_. 

Maybe she was dropped into the midst of a bunch of cosplayers who like to roam around buildings built before electricity was invented? She pushes aside the unease curdling in her chest and stands up. This doesn’t feel like a dream. Her dreams are always vivid, sure, but not _this_ vivid. Right now, she needs to deal with what she knows to be true, which is that she’s in a strange place and that she’s not dreaming. She should probably try to figure out where she is. As she thinks, she methodically picks all of the leaves out of her long brown hair. It got rather tangled while she was asleep and she doesn’t have a comb, so her fingers will have to do.  

Wren considers her list of priorities and the nagging urge to _do something_. First, she needs to find whatever passes as a bathroom here. Second, she needs to find a way to get home and if she can’t do that, she needs to secure a reliable source of food and shelter. Anything other than those priorities is not a problem for right now.

Satisfied, Wren gathers her blanket around her like a cape and pads out the door. She finds herself in a stone hallway lined with yet more torches, so she goes down the hallway and keeps walking until she reaches an atrium. It’s not what she would call bustling, not compared to the streets of Boston, but there’s certainly a sizeable number of people. Most of them are taller than her, which is nothing new considering that she stands at a generous five foot three.

There’s certainly a lot of artwork here: statues loom near the walls and stained glass glows at the other end of the room. She’s not sure what the animal heads on the walls are, but if they’re going for rustic chic with a generous dash of sixteenth century medieval Europe, then they’ve certainly achieved it.

Wren approaches one of the women wearing what are undoubtedly Chantry robes and gives the sister her best smile. “Hi, could you point me to where the restroom is?”

The Chantry sister replies, but it’s not in any language that Wren recognizes.

Smiling apologetically, Wren holds out her hands as best she can without dropping her blanket. “Sorry, I don’t understand. What was that?”

Frowning, the sister gestures for Wren to follow her and sets off at a brisk pace. Wren has to scramble to catch up with her and she stares at the statues as they pass. (Was that a mabari statue?) They go through a series of doors that Wren struggles to memorize before they walk outside.

Wren lifts a hand to shield her face against the bright sunlight and finds herself looking at a small wooden building sitting in front of a fence. Beyond that, smoke rises in columns from a series of buildings that look like they predate the industrial revolution. 

It takes Wren a moment to realize that the Chantry sister is pointing at the tiny wooden building and patiently repeating a word. Another moment passes before she realizes that the word probably means _outhouse._

Wren points at the building and states, “Outhouse,” before repeating the word that the woman said. She returns the sister’s delighted smile before slipping inside.

Afterwards, the sister goes back into the Chantry and leads her to a small room where another woman in Chantry robes presides over various trunks. Shelves lining the room contain lumps of fabric that must be clothes and pairs of simple shoes. The first sister goes over to the second sister and they exchange a few words in the unfamiliar language.

Casting a critical eye on Wren and her blanket, the new sister nods and then bustles about the shelves. A moment later, she thrusts an armful of clothes and a pair of shoes at Wren.

“Thank you.” Wren tells her as she takes the clothes.

The first Chantry sister says something and points to Wren before pausing until Wren repeats her words. That must be the word for _thank you,_ as the sister looks rather pleased and says something that’s likely _you’re welcome_ . They wave to the new sister as they leave the room and Wren learns the word for _goodbye._

Afterwards, the sister leads Wren back to her room and points to the clothes and then at Wren. Message received, get dressed. Wren waits for the sister to leave the room before she shucks her old clothes. The ones they gave her are simple and loose-fitting. There’s a linen undershirt, a wool tunic, breeches, thick wool socks, a belt, and plain leather shoes. She dresses quickly (although it takes her a minute to figure out the smallclothes) and stows her old clothing underneath her mattress. Wren laces up the leather boots and returns to the hallway where the sister waits for her.

The sister smiles at her and, once more, gestures for Wren to follow her through the hallways until they reach a room stacked with books. As Wren stares at the titles written in unfamiliar languages, the sister calls over a library attendant, and-- well, if Wren needed evidence that she’s not on earth, she finds it in the attendant. His eyes are larger than a human’s and his ears come to a sharp point. Wren suppresses the panic bubbling in her chest at the sight of an elf-- an _elf_ , shit-- and forces herself to look at the books again. Is she in fucking Dragon Age? Why couldn’t she have been dropped somewhere less dangerous, like a swamp full of angry crocodiles?

The elven librarian returns a minute later with a handful of books that he deposits in the sister’s hands. She tries to look as calm as possible as she follows the sister to a secluded table, where they both take seats. Pointing at herself, the sister says a word that Wren doesn’t catch. Wren frowns and the woman repeats the word again.

“Sian?” She tries.

It must be the sister’s name, as she nods and then points expectantly at Wren.

“Wren,” says Wren as she points at herself. “Sian.” She gestures towards Sister Sian.

This is met with another nod and Sister Sian opens the book in front of them. The first page contains a large, colorful illustration of a dog-- no, that’s too buff to be a dog. A mabari, then. Sister Sian points at the picture and says a word. Wren repeats it, stumbling over the words, and Sister Sian corrects her. And so begins a long afternoon of staring at a picture book until her eyes hurt.

Concrete objects are easier to learn. Mabari, house, food. More abstract ideas, like help, are harder. By the time they finish, Wren has learned an extremely eclectic handful of words including _no, Andraste, Common,_ and _please._ There aren’t any clocks or windows in the library, so she’s unsure what time it is. Her stomach, on the other hand, informs her with little uncertainty that it’s time for food.

“Food?” Wren asks.

Sister Sian laughs and leads her out of the library and through another maze of hallways. They emerge into a small mess hall full of people in Chantry robes plus a few others wearing similar clothes to Wren’s. Wren follows Sister Sian into the line on one side of the room and is rewarded with a tray of thin stew and a hunk of brown bread.

They take a seat at a wooden table and almost immediately, several pairs of eyes are on Wren. A human woman in Chantry robes-- Wren can’t tell which rank she is-- leans forward and asks what sounds like a question. Sister Sian replies and Wren catches what sounds like the word _Common,_ so she assumes that Sister Sian is explaining that Wren has no fucking clue what anyone is saying. Wren picks up her spoon to dig in, but Sister Sian holds out a hand and says… something. But then everyone bows their head and murmurs the same words and, oh, they’re praying. Wren ducks her head and pretends like she knows what’s going on. Prayer, at least, is something she’s familiar with. In a bittersweet way, it reminds her a little bit of her family. She waits until everyone else begins eating before she digs in.

Conversations in Common echo around the room, but Wren mostly ignores them. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see a few elves, but everyone else is human. She supposes that with the Chantry’s long history of mistreating elves, it makes sense that there are so few of them here.

Wren hunches over her plate and tries to ignore how tasteless the broth is. After several minutes of Wren awkwardly avoiding eye contact with everyone at the table, Sister Sian taps her shoulder and whisks her away. They deposit their plates in a bin near the kitchens before Sister Sian ushers Wren back through the hallways and into her room.

“Sleep.” Sister Sian says and then adds a string of words that Wren doesn’t recognize. Her confusion must be plain on her face, as Sister Sian slows down and makes a gesture with each word. She points to herself, then gestures from her eyes and towards Wren. _I see. I see you?_ There’s another sign, like something cycling. _The sun? The next day?_ _Tomorrow_?

She smiles placidly at Sister Sian. “Goodbye,” Wren tells her, using one of the handful of words she learned today.

With a wave, Sister Sian disappears out the door and leaves Wren to crawl into her bed. Several other people are already curled up in their respective beds and it looks like the majority of the beds aren’t taken. Maybe there’s a surplus of beds in the event of a natural disaster? Or the Blight. Shit, has the fifth Blight even happened yet? If the Blight happens, Wren will… shit, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. There’s no breach in the sky, so at least the events of Inquisition haven’t happened yet. She doesn’t even know which Dragon Age game she’s been thrown into or how she got here. 

Wren rolls onto her back and stares at the wooden slats above her bed. Straw sticking out of her mattress pokes her back. Someone has dimmed enough of the torches that it’s nearly dark enough to sleep, but her mind is racing too quickly for her to feel tired. She doesn’t even know what _year_ it is, let alone where in Thedas she is, and the thoughts should be terrifying but Wren only feels a yawning emptiness. Somehow, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s sleepwalking, and so the fear curls in her stomach instead of clawing its way into her heart. Maybe that’s a good thing, since she’s in a relatively unfamiliar place with no supplies, no allies, and no plan.

A plan. That’s something she can work on, at least. Food and shelter are the highest on her list of priorities, and she seems to have found that in the Chantry. But how long will they let her stay? She needs a long term plan, one that lets her figure out how the _fuck_ she landed in Thedas.  

Being transported to Thedas is the part that worries Wren the most. Even when she concentrates, she can’t summon anything from the past few weeks except for the knowledge that time did, in fact, pass. Her last coherent memory is of fiddling with the motors in a prosthetic hand and someone tapping her shoulder to remind her of a meeting, and then… nothing. She has the vague sense that things happened after that, so she didn’t come right to Thedas, but that’s it. It’s very odd. Perhaps Thedas is an elaborate hallucination and none of this is real. Wren doesn’t have enough information to figure out what happened, so she resolves to simply deal with it. Regardless of whether or not Thedas feels real, she doesn’t want to chance accidentally dying just because she didn’t take proper precautions. It seems like Thedas, so she should treat it like Thedas unless proven otherwise. 

Okay. She can figure this out. So she needs food, shelter, and a way to return home. She doesn’t remember anything that would help her recreate whatever brought her here, so she should focus on not dying. Wren has gone twenty five years without dying, so hopefully she can maintain that streak. If she’s in Thedas, she’ll need to learn to speak Common. Thedas likely doesn’t have any sort of ADHD medication, so she’s kind of fucked there, but she’s been off her meds before. It’ll be fine, hopefully, if a little annoying. As for Common, the Chantry seems able to feed her and teach her Common, but she doesn’t want to stay here forever.

Maybe she could flee. Val Royeaux has universities and would be relatively safe as long as she can avoid most of the Game. Rivain sounds relatively decent from what she recalls, so that’s another option. The Qun would take just about anyone, but there’s also the matter of brainwashing and whether they’d let her leave. Wren will pass on that, thanks.

As for jobs, Wren could become a professor-- she’s certainly learned enough math from mechanical engineering. Or with the amount of time she’s spent studying in libraries, she could try to find a job as a librarian. She could become a Chantry sister, but that feels too… permanent. Becoming a mercenary is out of the question and would likely end with Wren accidentally impaling herself on her own sword.

The Inquisition would have jobs, she thinks. Since the world doesn’t seem like it’s going to shit, then the events of Inquisition likely haven’t happened yet. If the Inquisition hasn’t been created yet, then they’ll be in desperate need of people when they first start out. She could join them, do work that vaguely resembles engineering, and-- what? Try to avoid dying in Haven? Pass information about the future to the Herald and get murdered by Leliana’s people for being a potential spy? Lay low and try to avoid fucking up the timeline? The Herald has succeeded in games without Wren’s interference. Sure, seeing some of the characters from Inquisition would be cool, but not dying is cooler.

Shit. Wren rubs at her face. The Inquisition may be the safest place in Thedas, especially once they’re in Skyhold. At least she wouldn’t be ass-deep in demons in some remote village. For right now, she should focus on learning Common, figuring out what year it is, and finding some sort of job. Once she does that, she can think about what to do with the Inquisition and figure out how and why she was sent to Thedas.

Drowsiness drags at Wren’s eyelids, but she’s left staring at the wall for a long time before sleep takes her.

\--- 

Wren wakes to a Chantry sister ringing a cowbell. Groaning, she rolls over and plants her face into the mattress. She can’t tell what time it is, but fuck, it’s definitely _way_ too early to be awake.

Someone taps her shoulder and Wren reluctantly lifts her face from her pillow, only to find herself nearly face to face with a Chantry sister. Sister Sian must have informed her of Wren’s inability to speak Common, as this sister only points to the door and says, “Hello.”

Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Wren rolls onto her back. The sister places a bundle on Wren’s mattress and, oh, those are more clothes. Sweet. 

“Thank you.” Wren replies and wow, she can use one of the phrases she’s learned! Incredible. 

The sister leaves and Wren examines the bundle she left. There’s another wool shirt and pair of pants, plus two more undershirts and three more pairs of socks. Wren glances around the room at the other people getting ready and, oh shit, there are trunks under every set of bunk beds. Wren rolls out of bed and finds her very own trunk waiting for her underneath her bed. (Shit, how did she not see this earlier? Exhaustion, perhaps?)

She quickly changes into some of the fresh clothes before stashing the rest of the clothes, plus her blanket and old clothes, in the trunk. Seeing her roughly folded clothes sitting by themselves in the trunk is disheartening, to say the least. This is not her world. Wren swallows the lump in her throat, laces her shoes, and follows the small stream of people leaving the room. 

They lead her to the outhouses, where everyone grabs a stick of... something from a waiting wooden case. A sleepy-eyed human sticks the stick into their mouth and Wren feels herself light up. The sticks are toothbrushes! Or some sort of tooth cleaner, but Wren’s mouth tastes gross enough that the vehicle of delivery doesn’t particularly matter to her. She peers into the case and finds a pile of twigs that have been stripped of their bark, exposing the fibers within.

Wren picks one and starts scrubbing at her teeth. It’s not minty fresh, but it’s better than nothing. She brushes her teeth, does her business, and follows everyone else inside. A shower would be wonderful, or even some face wash, but it seems like she’s out of luck. The group of fellow Chantry asylum seekers walk into the mess hall, but instead of sitting down to eat, they file into the kitchen. A wall of heat hits Wren in the face as soon as she’s through the door, so at least she won’t have to worry about being cold.

She looks around the room and finds a massive fireplace in the corner, which must be the source of the heat. Several kettles and what can only be called cauldrons rest atop the coals. Dried herbs and smoked meats hang from the rafters, and a group of people in the corner are kneading dough.

Two things strike Wren at once. One, she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s supposed to be doing. Two, there was no soap in the outhouses, so nobody here has washed their hands. Is that a Thedosian thing or specifically a Fereldan thing?

A stern-looking human with an apron dusted with flour walks up to Wren and asks her something in Common.

“Sorry, I don’t know much Common.” Wren tries her best to look apologetic.

The woman shakes her head and gestures for Wren to follow her over to dough-kneading station. She demonstrates how to knead and looks expectantly over at Wren. 

Wren nods, but the woman doesn’t leave. Instead, she points to the dough and says something in Common. Is that the word for _dough?_ She stares at Wren until Wren repeats the word to her satisfaction. The woman repeats the process for the words _knead_ and _bread_. Satisfied at last, the woman points to someone kneading loaves of bread and depositing the loaves onto a tray to proof. She shooes Wren over to the other person, a dark-haired human, and left with a clap on the back.

Okay. So she needs to knead the bread. That should be easy, right?

Two hours later, Wren’s hands _hurt._ And her wrists, and her fingers, and her back. Someone comes around with hunks of bread spread with jam and mugs of tea. Wren bites into the bread to see which flavor the jam is and, oh boy, it’s mystery flavor. Still, it’s hard to make bad bread and jam, so she scarf it down. She savors the tea as its warmth cuts into the soreness in her hands.

The break only lasts a few minutes before she’s back to kneading bread. It takes another two hours and a group prayer, presumably to bless the food they made, before everyone is dismissed for lunch. Wren trudges out of the kitchen with the rest of the pack of people, sweaty and tired, only to find Sister Sian waiting for her in the mess hall.

“Hello.” She tries to convey her exhaustion to Sister Sian through that single word, but she only laughs and gestures for Wren to follow her again. 

They end up in the library and Sister Sian pulls several books out of the stacks before sitting down at the same table as yesterday. This time, there’s a teapot along with two tea cups and two apples at the table. Wren takes a seat and Sister Sian opens the picture book from yesterday. They start with review but quickly move on to new words. 

There aren’t any windows in the library, so it’s all too easy to lose track of time. Sister Sian has to usher Wren into the dining hall for an early afternoon meal before they return to the library again. By the time that evening rolls around, Wren’s eyes are heavy. She can’t remember the last time that she went to sleep before nine at night, but here she is, yawning as Sister Sian guides her back to her room.

Wren pulls her blanket out of her trunk and collapses into bed. Today, she maintained her access to food and she learned a more words in Common. She also didn’t become a snack for a demon, which Wren counts as a success. Maybe she can push Sister Sian to teach her the words for numbers and dates so she can find out what year it is. That would be nice.

She falls asleep to the flickering torchlight.

\---

On the afternoon of Wren’s seventh day in Thedas, she sits in the library with Sister Sian. Being surrounded by books is a familiar comfort and one of the few things that’s remained the same since coming to Thedas. 

Hygiene in Thedas isn’t quite as bad as she thought it would be: the Chantry doesn’t use soap to wash their hands, but everyone in the kitchen has to thoroughly rinse their hands with water before work. Still rather gross, but at least it’s better than it could have been?

Yesterday, the Chantry sisters took everyone for their weekly bath in public bath house, which was… interesting. They had soap at the baths, at least, and little containers of hair oil that she guesses are to combat the harshness of the soap. Her hair is still getting used to being washed once a week, but it’s getting there. She’s getting there.

Library time has become an integral part of her daily routine and Wren finds herself coming to appreciate the quiet time spent learning Common. It’s certainly calmer than the mornings she spends helping the bakers in the kitchens knead bread. Her hands ache, but she can feel the beginnings of muscle in her arm.

Today, Wren stares at a jumble of numbers written in Common as Sister Sian waits patiently at her side.

“Thirteen, yes?” She points at what she’s reasonably certain is the number thirteen and looks expectantly at Sister Sian.

“That is the number thirteen,” replies Sister Sian.

Wren nods. “That is the number thirteen,” she repeats. The words feel clumsy on her tongue, but she can improve her accent later.

Sister Sian turns the page and points to another set of unfamiliar words that sits next to a drawing of the four seasons. She taps the picture of a snow-covered forest and says, “Winter." 

“Winter.”

Satisfied, Sister Sian points to each of the other three seasons and makes Wren repeat their names until her pronunciation is only somewhat mangled. Then she moves on to a drawing with twelve boxes and, oh shit, are those the months? Those must be the names of months in Common. Wren feels her heart thumping in her chest as Sister Sian goes through each month.

Wintermarch. Guardian. Drakonis. Cloudreach. Bloomingtide. Justinian. Solace. August. Kingsway. Harvestmere. Firstfall. Haring.

This is her chance to ask. “Which?” Wren points to the months and then holds her hands out to express her confusion.

Sister Sian frowns for a moment before realization dawns on her face. “Ah.” She taps the first month and says clearly, “Wintermarch. The thirteenth _day.”_ It takes Wren a moment to place what the last word was, but she nods for Sister Sian to continue. “Nine forty-one.” This is followed by several other words that Wren doesn’t recognize, but her mind is too busy processing her previous words.

Maybe Wren was thrown into nine forty-one in the Blessed age! That would be nice. It would certainly be nicer than being in Thedas right before the breach is supposed to open!

Sister Sian says something else, reminding Wren that she’s in the middle of a language lesson. She shoves her panic to the back of her mind and focuses on the word that Sister Sian is painstakingly pronouncing. 

Later that night, as she lays in her bed, she considers her options again. She could join the Inquisition or she could try to find work in Val Royeaux or Rivain. Regardless of her choice, she’ll need to start gathering money and resources if she wants to travel. 

A hobby of some sort would also be useful-- Wren can knead bread and learn Common, but after a while, it’s going to get fucking boring. She’s halfway through getting her doctor of philosophy and she’s been doing research for the past three years. Suddenly stopping is like a vacation, perhaps, but her hands are going to start itching soon. There’s no mechanical engineering in Thedas, but maybe she can find a project to keep herself busy.

Wren wonders if her project can be working on a way to get herself home, but she quickly shoves the thought aside. If something managed to fuck up reality enough to bring her to Thedas, then it’s going to be hard to un-fuck that mess. She’s definitely not a mage and it’s not like she knows anyone who’s capable of helping her figure this bullshit out. Besides, it’s… well. The idea of not being able to return home feels thrashes in her hands like fish out of water. It’s not dead, but it’s slippery and uncomfortable to hold and its scales bite into her hands. Ignoring it is easier.

And so she does. 

\---

That night, Wren dreams of the sky tearing itself apart. Green drips from its jagged edges like saliva from a wolf’s teeth. She takes a seat in the middle of a vast field of grass and lets herself marvel at the sky twisted with its green, snarling wolf’s maw.

Will this be her future? Stuck in a strange land, barely able to speak the language and separated from her family and friends? What happens if she gets sick? What happens if a terror demon disembowels her the day after the breach opens?

Shit, she’s not prepared for this. She’s not equipped to deal with this at all. In her dream, her emotions feel muted but Wren cries all the same. She cries until her throat feels raw and her lungs hurt like a great beast is clawing at them.

Grass crunches. Wren looks up and sees several figures dressed in the style of the Venatori who are looming at the edge of her dream-field. She rubs at her eyes and stands up, planting her hands on her hips.

“No,” she hisses. “Absolutely not. I already have one nightmare, I don’t need another one.”

The figures don’t move, since apparently her subconscious enjoys toying with her. Or maybe not, since a pebble materializes next to her feet. Wren scoops up the pebble at lobs it at the knees of the closest Venatori goon.

“Begone, thot!” She shouts.

It’s disturbingly effective. The Venatori lookalikes melt back into the darkness and Wren sits down with a huff. She finds that the sadness clogging her throat has eased with the disappearance of the nightmares, and so she’s left alone in the field with the breach grinning down at her. Wren lays down and lets herself sink into the soft grass and the distant twinkling of the stars. 

\---

The next morning, Wren nearly forgets how long she’s been in Thedas. She scrounges a piece of parchment from the library and uses a small lump of charcoal to draw eight tally marks on it for her eight days spent in Thedas.

In a way, it’s almost like a dream journal. Without it, the days would slip through her fingers like water. The parchment sits within her trunk, nestled next to her spare pairs of socks. She removes her ear piercings, all of her lobe piercings and her helixes, and tucks them next to the parchment for safekeeping. Nobody in the Chantry seems to have any piercings and it’s better for her to blend in.

Whenever she looks at her trunk, knowledge of its existence smolders in the back of her mind like an ember, comforting and warm.

\---

The vague sense that she should be doing something, _anything,_ nags at her. Her fingers itch to build something, but that could also be from not having her ADHD medication. It feels like she’s waiting for someone to come find her. How anyone would find her, Wren has no clue. Each day, the expectation that help is coming shrinks and shrinks until it’s small enough for her to ignore it entirely.

She’s so tired.

\--- 

After kitchen duty on the tenth day, Sister Sian meets her in the mess hall as usual. Today, her normally sunny demeanor is rather downtrodden, and Wren can almost immediately tell that something is wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Sister Sian says before spilling into a long string of Common that Wren can only partially decipher. She catches _work_ and _today_ , and she can guess the rest by the look on Sister Sian’s face.

“No learning today?” Wren asks.

A nod. “I’m sorry,” Sister Sian repeats. “Tomorrow, yes. Today, no.”

She gives Sister Sian a bright smile and pats her shoulder. “Yes. See… see you tomorrow?”

“I will see you tomorrow,” Sister Sian confirms with a hesitant smile. She waves at Wren before scurrying off, presumably to do something Chantry-related. 

Wren is left staring at a nearly empty mess hall and a free afternoon. Well then. Today is as good a day as any to go check out the village.

\--- 

Before leaving, Wren pays a visit to the supply room to see about acquiring a cloak. Although she lacks the words to convey “I want to walk around the town and then come back later,” miming a person walking in a loop plus the words _cloak_ and _cold_ seems to do the trick. She leaves with a slightly tattered cloak in addition to a pair of gloves and an old knitted scarf. 

Wren steps outside the front doors of the Chantry and rubs her gloved hands together as her breath plumes in the crisp winter air. Snow coats much of the village and pillars of smoke mark the buildings beyond the Chantry walls. The buildings look like something out of a historical reenactment if historical reenactments had elves and dwarves.

Pulling her cloak tighter around herself, Wren ventures out into the village. Wandering through the dirt roads reminds her an awful lot of the first time she was allowed to drive a car by herself after getting her license. She was legally allowed to be there, but it still felt like she was intruding. 

Most of the signs have small pictures in addition to Common words. She passes a general store and a tavern, both with a constant stream of people entering and exiting. It occurs to Wren that she has no reference for town sizes in Thedas. This town could be exceptionally large and she would have no idea. Hell, she’s used to running around Boston, so her size reference is likely already skewed.

Someone bumps into her shoulder and Wren nearly stumbles as it startles her out of her thoughts. How long has she been standing in front of the blacksmith’s shop? She may as well go inside-- she’s been awkwardly staring at it for the past five minutes and it’ll certainly be warmer than the outside. A bell on the door rings as she opens it and a wall of heat hits her in the face as soon as she steps through the door.

It takes her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the warmth light of the forge. Wren rubs at her eyes and looks around at the wooden tables lining the shop with tools neatly arranged on their surfaces. Air from the forge suffuses the room in the soft smell of a campfire, along with the familiar tang of metal. It reminds her, in its own way, of the machine shop at her university.

A man sitting in the corner looks up from the bench he’s seated on as he sorts various hammers and metal files. He raises an eyebrow at her, bald head gleaming in the firelight, and says something. His tone suggests that he’s asking a question, but most of his words are lost to her except for _help._

“Sorry,” says Wren with a sheepish smile, “Looking. I do not know Common well.” (Yet another phrase learned from Sister Sian.)

“ _You speak Dwarven_?” He asks in heavily accented English. It sounds like some sort of British or Scottish accent, but she has no clue which region it would be from on Earth. 

Holy _shit_. Someone can understand her. Sure, it’s strange that he calls it Dwarven instead of English, but Wren will take whatever she can get.

Wren feels her eyes light up and she beams at the man. “ _Yes! I’m sorry for my terrible Common-- I only arrived here a week or two ago, so I started learning rather recently._ ”

“ _That’s okay. My Dwarven is bad, but I know more than I can speak.”_ He nods and leans back against the wall. “ _Well, welcome to Redcliffe. I’m Harritt_.”

_Fuck._

She should have recognized him by his mutton chops the moment she walked in door. What are the odds of meeting someone from Inquisition? They must be low, and yet here she is, standing in a blacksmith’s shop with Harritt. 

“ _My name is Wren. It’s a pleasure to meet you._ ” She replies and tries to keep the magnitude of her revelation from her voice.

“ _Good to meet you. So, why are you here?_ ” Harritt plunks another metal file into the box. _“Redcliffe is nice, but right now isn’t a good time to visit. Too much… what’s the word? War. Too much war here.”_  

“ _I’m here by accident._ ” Wren weighs her next words carefully and decides that amnesia provides a decent cover story. It is the truth, after all, even if it’s rather suspicious. “ _Something happened, I think, that messed up my memory. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on the side of the road. The Chantry here took me in.”_

He regards her carefully for a moment before nodding. His expression is neutral enough that she can’t tell if he bought it, but he at least doesn’t seem outright suspicious or hostile. _“That’s too bad. It’s not that safe here."_

She laughs weakly. _“The Chantry is keeping me relatively sheltered, as it were. The most dangerous things I’ve done are kneading bread and learning Common.”_

Harritt chuckles and rearranges a handful of small metal tools sitting in front of him. _“Does the Chantry have anyone who can speak Dwarven?”_

Wren shrugs. _“None that I’ve met. One of the Chantry sisters has been teaching me Common.”_

He makes a thoughtful noise and looks up at her again. _“Well, if you want to talk in Dwarven, come speak to me. I’m not good, but I know some. I don’t do much else except for putting things away for when I leave the shop. Maybe you can come tell me why you know Dwarven and not Common.”_

 _“Oh! That would be wonderful.”_ Her mind whirls. Harritt is leaving Redcliffe? Isn’t he supposed to arrive at Haven right after the breach opens? The game never mentioned exactly when it opens, but it must be sooner than she thought. _“When are you leaving?”_

_“Two weeks.”_

That means the breach opens a little over two weeks from today.

Wren smiles. _“I’ll make sure to drop by again before then. I think I’m going to go explore the town now, but I’ll see you soon!”_

She gives him a little wave and, with one last look around his shop, slips back out the front door. Her heart pounds as she stares at the bustling street. Sure, she looks out of place in Thedas, but

Harritt didn’t run out screaming _h_ _ey, you look like you’re from earth._ It feels very much like she just got away with something. She’ll have to figure out a plausible backstory besides _I have amnesia, oops,_ but this is a start. 

Wren spends the rest of the afternoon wandering through the maze-like streets of Redcliffe. By the time dusk falls, her boots are covered in muds but her heart feels like it’s soaring. 

\--- 

She dreams of the machine shop at her old college, of the smell of metal shavings and the whirr of the lathe. Wren lets herself wander through her dream, running her hands over the rack full of safety goggles and the concrete walls.

It smells a little like Harritt’s shop and Wren picks up a wrench, running her fingers over the cool metal. There’s no engines or heavy machinery to fiddle with in Thedas, but maybe she can find something else. If she manages to convince Harritt to take her with him, then she’d be able to find work in the Inquisition. Even if it’s too dangerous for her to tell the inner circle what she knows, she can help in other ways. She could find ways to improve the trebuchets or she could create better evacuation procedures to minimize the loss of life in eventual attack on Haven. She doesn’t need to be in the spotlight to be able to help the fledgling Inquisition.

Her dream dissolves into nothingness, and Wren sleeps peacefully.

\---

She wakes early the next morning and resolves to find Sister Sian before it’s time to help out in the kitchens. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Wren pulls on a (relatively) fresh set of clothes and shuffles into the hallway. Wren has to ask two separate Chantry clerics about Sister Sian’s whereabouts before someone finally points her to the garden. There she finds Sister Sian wearing a gardening smock as she digs tiny holes in rows of soil.

“Good morning!” Wren calls. Sister Sian looks up and waves as Wren approaches. “I have a question,” Wren begins. “There are-- there is? There is a… a man in--” she gestures in the direction of the village, “And he can speak. Can I go lunch?”

“You’re going into town for lunch and you’re going to talk with a man who can speak with you?” she looks to Wren for confirmation. Wren nods and repeats Sister Sian’s  words, stumbling over the pronunciation.

Sister Sian brushes some of the dirt from her hands. “Who is it?”

“Harritt. He--” she mimics the motion of swinging a hammer.

“Ah, I understand. Harritt the blacksmith. Hmmm.” As Sister Sian thinks, she settles back onto her haunches before nodding. “Yes, good. After lunch, come to me.” She points to herself to emphasize her words.

Wren brightens. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” she replies as she returns to her digging with a smile.

Work in the kitchens passes as it always does. Wren kneads dough until her arms ache, and then she kneads some more. As everyone begins filing out of the kitchens for lunch, Wren approaches one of the bakers wearing a flour-dusted apron.

“Hello,” she says with her best smile. “I am going into town for lunch with Harritt the blacksmith. Can I take bread, please?”

The baker turns to look at her and crosses his arms, looking her over. “You want bread?” Her language lessons must be paying off, since he nods and wanders off. Wren amuses herself by toying with a loose thread on the hem of her sleeve until the baker returns with a cloth parcel. He deposits it in her hands and Wren can already smell the warm bread within. There’s something else in there-- jars?

“Thank you!” Wren beams and places her hand on her heart. “Goodbye!”

She waves at the baker and scurries out of the kitchen, package in hand. It doesn’t take long for her to shrug on the cloak, scarf, and gloves stashed in her trunk before heading into town. Chilly winter wind blows the edges of her scarf around as Wren squints at the sign of each shop. Where was Harritt’s shop? Ah, there it is.

The little bell rings merrily as she opens the door and she finds Harritt sorting through nails.

“Good morning!” Wren says in Common as she heads over to his bench. “How are you?”

Harritt raises a hand in greeting and gestures for her to sit down on the bench. To her delight, he replies in Common instead of English-- Dwarven-- whatever it’s called. Regardless, it’s a good chance to practice Common with someone who can translate words from English to Common. “I’m good. And you?”

“I’m good.” Even if her grammar is horrible, it’s rather gratifying to be able to hold basic conversations. Sister Sian has begun teaching her useful phrases in Common, and Wren happily employs one of them as she points at the nails. “What is the name for that?”

“Those are nails,” explains Harritt. 

“Nails. Okay.” Wren nods and sets the cloth-wrapped parcel the baker gave her in her lap. She opens it and the smell of freshly baked bread cuts through the tang of metal. There’s two large rolls of bread, plus a small jar of stew and a tiny container of butter. It’s definitely enough bread for two people-- she makes a mental note to thank the baker later.

“Want bread?” She points at one of the rolls and then adds in English, “ _Please correct me if my grammar is wrong.”_

This earns a quiet laugh. “Your grammar is fine.” He eyes the roll and Wren hands it to him along with the tiny container of butter.

“Here. It’s… it make this morning? Still hot.”

Harritt accepts the roll and butter. “ _In Common, you can say this.”_ He says a phrase and Wren repeats it dutifully. The game didn’t show all of Harritt’s kindness, although she recalls his dislike of mages. He... should really work on that. Meeting real mages might help. 

She turns her attention to the jar in her lap and unscrews the lid to release the smell of stew into the shop. Breaking off a piece of her bread roll, Wren dunks it into her stew. The food in Ferelden needs more seasoning, but hunger makes it taste far better.

“So,” says Harritt before saying a string of words in Common. 

Wren stares at him uncomprehendingly. “What?”

Harritt repeats his question in English. “ _Why does a human know Dwarven, not Common? You don’t have to say. I am… how to say it. I want to know, for my own interest.”_

“ _Oh_ .” Does it count as letting someone unlock her tragic backstory if she’s only telling them half truths? She shrugs and tears off another piece of bread. “ _Good question. I don’t actually know why. All I know is that I woke up recently on the side of a road in a place where almost nobody can understand me.”_ His eyes bore into her as she dips the chunk of bread in the stew. “ _I’m sorry if that sounds suspicious or strange, but I’m still looking for answers.”_

After a moment, Harritt strokes his mustache. “ _Well, that’s interesting.”_

Wren smiles weakly and stares down at her lap. “ _I’m hoping to figure out what happened. Right now, my goal is to learn Common, find some job or way to survive, and then start chasing down answers. If I may ask, why do you know Dwarven? I thought that it’s a mostly dead language.”_

“I _t’s not all dead.”_ He shrugs. “ _Dwarven scholars and smiths still say it. Lots of books on smithing are in Dwarven. The spelling is the same as it’s spoken, so if you can read it then you can say it.”_  

The information sinks in and she stares at him for a moment. “ _Huh.”_ She could have sworn that Dwarven is barely spoken anymore since everyone switched to Common, but she supposes that this is a case of not believing everything the she reads online about Dragon Age. Did the games make broad generalizations about other things, then?

As she thinks, her gaze drifts to one of the machines lining the wall, and… that looks oddly familiar. _“Sorry, but is that a lathe?”_ She points at the machine, which has a rotating stand on one end and a carving tool fixed to the other.

Harritt follows her gaze. “ _T_ _he lathe? In Common, that is a--”_ He says the Common word for it. “ _You have seen one before?”_

Nodding, Wren sets her food on the bench and drifts over to the lathe. “ _I think I have, or at least something similar.”_ There was-- is-- one in the machine shop in her college. She spent many long hours in the machine shop whenever she needed to craft something for an engineering class. That one used electricity and was encased in stainless steel, whereas this lathe is made of iron and wood. A pang of homesickness bursts in her chest, but she quickly buries it as she fights to keep her face neutral. 

Wren forces herself to sit back down even though she longs to further examine the lathe. “ _Do you need any help sorting these nails? If I’m going to pester you during lunch, then I might as well make myself useful.”_

Harritt blinks and then shrugs. “ _If you want, you can help.”_ He slides the pile of nails and the wooden box towards Wren. “ _You are a person who likes to be doing things? Not doing nothing?”_

“ _In a sense, yes. I don’t like being idle.”_  It looks like the nails are organized by length, which should be easy enough. She grabs a handful of nails, lines them up in a bundle, and picks out the taller nails. Some of them have different heads and others have different thicknesses and threads. And… “ _Are these all made with the same metal?”_

Wren looks up and finds Harritt watching her with an amused smile. “ _You enjoy--”_ he makes a sweeping motion that she supposes means sorting, “-- _nails?”_

“ _Recently, I’ve been baking bread and trying to read Common books meant for children. This is a nice change of pace.”_ She protests.

“ _Do you know how to forge things?”_ He inquires, voice deceptively casual.

“ _I haven’t done any forging, but I’ve worked with metal. I don’t think that I remember all of it, though,”_ she replies. The lie hurts, but it’s close to the truth. Besides, memory loss gives her a convenient excuse for being unfamiliar with Thedosian machinery.

A pause as Harritt carefully picks up several nails. “ _This one here is iron. The longer one is steel, and that one there is iron cut with twenty percent veridium for sturdiness…”_  

He goes through and names each metal first in English and then in Common. His pronunciation of technical terms is far better than the rest of his words-- it makes sense, if he learned Dwarven for smithing purposes. 

It strikes Wren that he doesn’t have to explain anything. Harritt isn’t obligated to help her, but instead he chats with the suspicious human girl who wandered in his shop and teaches her what the Common word for silverite is. It’s… incredibly kind, honestly.

Wren finishes off her food and Harritt’s bread disappears bit by bit. By the time that he finishes translating the names of the metals in the nails plus the names of common metals, it’s nearly afternoon.

“I go back to the Chantry now to learn,” she tells him in Common as she gathers up the cloth and used jars that held her stew and the butter. “I thank you. Can…” Wren frowns as she scrambles for the words she wants. “ _How do you say, can I come by tomorrow and ask you more questions?”_

He pauses for a moment, processing her question, before he tells he. She repeats it gratefully.

“Thank you,” she says again.

Harritt says something in Common that she guesses roughly means _no problem_ and waves at her. “See you tomorrow.”

With a wave, Wren stands up and lets herself back out into the biting cold.

\--- 

Visiting the blacksmith for lunch quickly becomes part of her daily routine. She brings him bread and helps him with odd jobs and with packing up the shop. In return, he translates words in Common. Her Common improves and, she notes, so does his Dwarven. It’s still a little stilted and sometimes they have to use hand gestures, but it’s better.

It’s a little surreal to talk to someone from a video game. His mutton chops are more incredible in person, she thinks, and he’s kinder than she expected. Harritt fears mages, but maybe she can talk him out of it.

("Maybe" seems to crop up a lot lately. Maybe she’ll join the Inquisition, maybe she’ll find a way home, maybe she’ll survive the oncoming wave of demons after the breach opens. Maybe, maybe, maybe.)

On the sixth day since beginning her daily lunches with Harritt, she eats her lunch quickly so she can help Harritt load tools and boxes of supplies into a large crate.

Wren slides a box of tongs into place and straightens, brushing sawdust from her hands. “Harritt?” 

“Hmmm?” He doesn’t glance back at her as he begins to dissemble the lathe. “What is it?”

“You are going to Haven. Do you-- are you going with others?” She fumbles through the Common, but hey, it’s a relatively coherent sentence.

Harritt pauses his work to look over his shoulder at her. “No. Why?”

Wren switches to Dwarven. “ _Have you thought about taking someone with you to help? ”_ His expression doesn’t change, but she continues, “ _I was wondering if I could travel to Haven with you. Right now, there are enough mages and important people in Haven that maybe I’ll be able to get a lead as to what happened to me. Besides, traveling by yourself is dangerous, especially right now. Once you get to Haven, I could help you unpack and set up your forge again.”_

For a long, torturous heartbeat, Harritt falls silent as he thinks. 

“ _Sure, why not?”_

She nearly drops the hammer she’s holding. “ _Wait, really? You mean it?”_

Harritt shrugs. _“You make sense. Another person will help to get rid of… how do you say it? Bad people who want to take things. It’ll help me and it’ll help you. I could use the help.”_

 _“Okay.”_ Wren sets the hammer down as she processes the information. She’s going to fucking _Haven_ . It’ll be safer than Redcliffe, at least until they’re getting ready to close the breach, and she’ll be able to watch the birth of the Inquisition. “ _You still have about a week left, right? When do we leave?”_

 _“We leave in the morning in eight days. It’ll take three days to get to Haven. Making the forge itself again will take some more days, but I can find extra help for it.”_ He pauses and casts a critical eye on Wren’s cloak, which is currently laying in a crumpled heap on one of the benches. “ _You will need warm clothes, better than what the Chantry gave you. I can give you your money for work early so you can buy warm clothes.”_

 _“Work money? Like… payment?”_ Wren blinks.

“ _Well, you would be working for me. You didn’t think that you’d work for free? You work, you get money.”_ Harritt shakes his head and returns to dismantling the lathe.

\---

After heading back to the Chantry, she heads straight to the library and tells Sister Sian of her plans in her stilted Common.

Sister Sian smiles and places a hand on Wren’s shoulder. “I am happy for you. You’re welcome to stay here until you leave.”

“Thank you,” Wren says, hands fluttering with excitement. “I want to good work? Um. I want to do good work there.”

“You will,” replies Sister Sian as she opens the book in front of her. “But first, your lessons.”

\---

That night, she dreams of the ocean. It’s a familiar dream, and so Wren lets herself be comforted by the waves rocking her tiny rowboat and the smell of salt. She lays on her back and stares at the sky, light blue and cloudless, until it’s time for her to wake.

\---

Buying clothes is an adventure.

Wren reviews the words for different pieces of clothing along with fabrics such as wool and linen. She’s been learning Common for three weeks and although she’s not fluent yet, she can get her point across. It’s exciting to finally know the words for things instead of trying to use her hands to express what she wants to say.

With a pouch of coppers bouncing against her leg, Wren heads into town to find the nearest clothing store. She emerges with a sack full of new clothing, including a pair of sturdy leather boots and a wool cloak dyed a shade of deep blue. Upon returning to the Chantry, she stashes everything away in her trunk.

As she stares at her nearly-full trunk, her eye catches on the paper tallying her days spent in Thedas. It’s been twenty four days since she arrived in Redcliffe and when she leaves for Haven in four days’ time, she’ll have spent twenty eight days in Thedas. Shit, has it really been that long? She still feels like an outsider, but the feeling dulls with each Common word she learns. Wren doesn’t know how she feels about that and so she shoves it to the back of her mind. That’s a problem for later-- she has more important things to think about.

\---

She hugs Sister Sian the day she leaves. The sun has not yet fully risen to warm the air and a chilly pre-dawn breeze bites her face, but Wren can’t bring herself to mind. Her trunk in the Redcliffe Chantry is empty and all of her worldly possessions are currently strapped to her back.

“Thank you for helping me,” she tells Sister Sian.

Sister Sian smiles sadly and places a gentle hand on Wren’s shoulder. “Remember to write.”

“I will try. We will be busy, there will be a lot of work to do.” That’s an understatement. Tears burn at her eyes and Wren swipes a hand across her face to get rid of them. With a final smile, Wren hugs Sister Sian once more before beginning the trek into the village. 

She finds Harritt waiting for her at the edge of town with a wagon full of forge supplies pulled by two burly horses. He raises a hand in greeting. “Are you ready?”

Wren smiles up at him and hops into the front seat of the wagon. A sense of finality drags at her steps, but there’s no turning back now. “Yeah.”

Harritt claps her on the shoulder before taking the reins. She takes a moment to marvel at the silhouette that Redcliffe’s buildings make against the dawn sky before their wagon lurches to life. Buildings roll by, then signs, and then they’re on the dusty road leading them towards the Frostbacks.  

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! It does a lot to prepare for the events of future chapters, which will be a little more fast-paced than this one. Updates will likely be slow because I'm a college student.
> 
> If you have any questions, comments, or constructive criticism, please let me know! I love getting feedback so I can improve my writing. This goes for everything, including how I write certain characters and also if I happen to mess up Dragon Age lore. 
> 
> To hear more of my nonsense, come to my writing blog, [distracted-dragon-age](https://distracted-dragon-age.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Shoutout to [squidpond](http://squidpond.tumblr.com/) for betaing!


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